" (Coco was her pet name for
him, a souvenir of Paris.)

He acknowledged that, having chosen her role, she played it well. She
made him comfortable. She was a good housekeeper, and a fair organizer
generally. She knew how to be well served. He thought that her manner
to servants was often inexcusable, but she "kept" her servants, and they
would "do anything" for her. Further, except that she could not shine in
conversation, she was a good hostess. She never made mistakes, never
became muddled, never forgot. Of course she had friends to whom he was
indifferent or perhaps slightly hostile, but she was entitled to her
friends, as he to his. And she was a good mother. Stranger still, though
she understood none of the arts and had no logical taste, she possessed
a gift of guessing or of divination which, in all affairs relating to
the home, was the practical equivalent of genuine taste. George had
first noticed this faculty in her when she put a thousand pounds of her
money to a thousand pounds of his stepfather's and they began to buy
furniture. The house was beautifully furnished, and she had done her
share. And in the alterations, additions, and replacements which for
several years she had the habit of springing upon him, she rarely
offended him. Still, he knew indubitably that she had not taste,--anyhow
in his sense of the term,--and would never, never acquire it. An
astonishing creature! He had not finished being astonished at her. In
some respects he had not even come to a decision about her. For
instance, he suspected that she had "no notion of money," but he could
not be sure. She did what she liked with her own income, which was about
two hundred a year; that is to say, she clothed herself out of it. Her
household accounts were unknown to him; he had once essayed to
comprehend them, but had drawn back affrighted.

"Well," she said plaintively. "Now you're here, I think you might sit a
bit with me. It's most awfully lonely for me."

"I can't possibly," he said, with calm. "I have to rush off to the club
to see Davids about that business."

She ignored his inescapable duties! It was nothing to her that he had a
hundred affairs to arrange before his night-journey to the north. She
wanted him to sit with her. Therefore she thought that he ought to sit
with her, and she would be conscious of a grievance if he did not.
'Lonely!' Because the children were going out for an hour or so!
Besides, even if it was lonely, fac